Those Omani guys have style. Unlike their neighbors, they do not wear the traditional white/red head covering. Instead, they have their own turban like scarf they wrap around their heads. This is me wearing a scarf from Oman...but I'm wearing it in Emirati style because no one here in my office knows how to wrap it Omani style (with no tail hanging down). Thanks, Kelly, for the super cool gift!!(CNN) -- It pays to go in a small south Indian town.
The remote town of Musiri in the Tamil Nadu state has hit upon a unique idea to teach its residents proper hygiene: pay them money each time they use the toilet.
Users can make up to $0.14 a month to relieve themselves in a specially constructed toilet. Not a princely sum, but it's extra cash flow that low-income residents can make just for answering nature's call.
The government-backed program serves two purpose: It encourages people to discard age-old practices of urinating and defecating in the open, leading to diseases. And the waste product goes into research to test their effectiveness as fertilizers.
"We're motivating people to know the value of their urine," said Marathi Subburaman, who came up with the novel idea. "The urine that is collected goes into fields for paddy crops, and of course the feces becomes good compost in a matter of months."
Aid groups estimate that more than 330 million people in India do not have access to proper sanitation facilities. And in the case of Musiri, many residents relieve themselves on river banks, leading to infectious diseases such as diarrhea.
And while both governmental and non-governmental agencies have taken on projects to build toilets in rural areas, they also have had to undertake campaigns to encourage people to use them.
The Musiri plan seems to be working, Subburaman said. About 150 residents use the eco-sanitation toilet daily. It has special chambers that collect the fecal matter that researchers than use as fertilizer.
It's a win-win scenario, said Subburaman.
His non-profit Society for Community Organisation and People's Education (SCOPE) has teamed up with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and are studying how much urine is needed to fertilize a field.
"Next year, we can install urine banks so we can sell the urine to farmers," he said.
For now, residents queue up twice a day. They are given cards where each trip is marked off. At the end of the month, residents can cash out the cards, making up to $0.14.
Subburaman approached the amount by calculating that an average person will need to relieve himself two times for each of the 30 days and make 10 paisas per visit.
"If they ask to go three, four times a day, then something's wrong," he said. "We ask them to go to a doctor."
Here are a few pictures from my weekend on the beach in Oman. On Friday we went snorkeling on an organized tour. Then on Saturday we just paid some local kid to take us to a private, deserted beach that can only be accessed by boat. That's where these pictures were taken. The rock formations here are spectacular. And the water is full of dolphins, turtles, sharks, and whales (none of which we saw).
DOHA • The Psychiatry Department at the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has come across several families trying to leave their members with previous records of psychiatric problems in the hospital, as they go on summer holidays.
The Department, however, does not entertain such requests, because the condition of the "patient" is stable and it is not necessary to put them in the hospital, Dr Suhaila A Ghuloum, consultant psychiatrist at the Department told The Peninsula yesterday.
“With the onset of summer we have been getting several requests of this nature. Such patients did have some psychological problems, but their condition is presently stable. By admitting them in the hospital, we would be denying opportunity for more deserving patients,” said Ghuloum.
“At the most we admit them for a few days, and then send them back to their families,” she added.
Ghuloum was reacting to a query from The Peninsula about the summer-related cases being encountered by the Department.
She said the Department, so far, has not seen a rise in psychological problems directly related with the extreme weather conditions. However, depression and work-related stress are on the rise, particularly among the newly recruited labourers.
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